They came toFrance in search of the good life, setting up home in a picturesque village deep in the French countryside. Three British families fell in love with the small farming community of Bussière-Boffy, near Limoges, and six years ago decided to settle there, raising their children amid the rolling hills and lush woodland.

But now that dreamy lifestyle has become a nightmare.

The families have chosen to live in yurts - a circular, latticed framework of poles covered with felt or skins, which is the traditional dwelling of the nomadic peoples of the Asian steppes. And the local mayor has now taken to the courts to force them to leave, with the increasingly-bitter legal battle dividing the village and pitting those who support the Britons against the allies of the mayor, who claims they are acting “like a bunch of kids” by refusing to comply with planning laws.

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France seems to have many of those stories. And another one in New Zealand this week (Courthouse yurt built to protest housing policy | Stuff.co.nz). There will be more and more - mayors afraid of loosing tax money or buidling inspectors not wanting to take any responsability.
It is funny to see that the mayor in that French village argues that the yurt is not a tent to have it removed. In our village in Quebec a few years back, the mayor argued it WAS a tent to have it removed. Once we explained it was indeed a gazebo the yurt was allowed to stay...

When I went to the first World Yurt Maker's Conference in France several years ago, I was the only representative of our unique, North American yurt designs. The North American yurt is very similar to the ancient design, but it is very different than those made throughout Europe and Asia in some key ways.

While many of the attendees of the conference at first were resistant to consider our yurts in their same scope because of our intense engineering and modern day materials, in the end most of them came to realize my main point: Modern codes will not ever allow for the ancient designs to be permitted as a modern day residence. They just don't fit their model. It sucks, but it's the facts.

When I started our yurt business here in Hawaii, it was one of my main founding principals: I did not want the county officials thinking that my aim was to skirt their laws. My aim was to meet their codes, and adapt the structures to comply. Yurts are amazing. They can even adapt in that way if you put in the effort. It's true that you can't expect special treatment just because you have different ideas. It's up to you to figure out a way through, not up to officials to bow gracefully out of the way. While that would be nice in some situations, they're just doing their jobs when they stand firm. Think outside the box! There's a way through.